Phelps Lake Loop

Continuing my backblips

September 20th
Our first evening in Grand Teton, we had done a relatively short trail to the shore of Phelps Lake. This morning, our last morning, we decided to do the full loop around the lake - about 7 1/2 miles. This morning was the best morning we’d had for visibility - the mountain peaks finally being clear. When we reached the car park, however, we found it was full. There were rangers on duty, and they had set up two lanes, one for people who wanted to turn around and go out, and another, to wait in line for a space. Jen suggested Roger and I set off and she would wait for a space, then being younger and more sprightly ( and taking less photos!) would catch us up! We actually had a small amount of phone signal so we could text, and we did decide we would go around anti clockwise! So we set off, and we hadn’t gone that far - we hadn’t yet reached the lake, when I rounded a curve in the trail, and saw a black bear ambling across the trail a little way ahead! I stopped and slowly backed up. Fortunately the bear, I would say a young one, seemed fairly oblivious to us and went on his way through the trees. I was close enough to have got a decent photograph, but obviously it wasn’t foremost in my mind! After a while Roger saw a group of people stopped just the other side of where we had seen the bear, and called out to them if they could see him. They couldn’t either, so we continued more cautiously, occasionally banging our hiking sticks together to make a noise, and texted Jen to warn her. We passed several people coming the other way, and they too had seen a bear, so it was clearly a day for the “teddy bears to have their picnic”! After a while once we knew Jen had finally got a parking spot and was on her way, we decided to stop and let her catch up with us, as we didn’t like the idea of her being on her own, although there were other hikers about - also as a seasoned hiker, she carries bear spray ( a strong pepper spray) in her back back as a precaution, not that we wanted it to come to that, as the bear needs to be pretty close before you use it! So we had an exciting start to the hike, but fortunately the rest progressed without incident, and affording us many wonderful views and some gorgeous autumn colour - hence another collage! Once we had finished our hike, it was time for us to return to Salt Lake City. We took a different route home along some largely empty Idaho country roads - more beautiful Fall colour, but a little nerve- wracking at one point as we were getting low on fuel! However, we reached a town in time, and completed the rest of our journey uneventfully, arriving back at about 7.30, where Jason was fixing dinner for us.